Quito

Vast, loud, polluted and very busy. Quito is as any capital should be with the added bonus of being at 2800m cradled by even taller mountain's peaks, some lovely old architecture and some big parks.

We stayed in the travelers ghetto, named so due to the high concentration of hostels and traveler based cafes, bars and restaurants. Yay much food and much drink.

We visited the equator, and we had our GPS with us, it turns out the monument and the line are in fact about 250m shy of the real equator, and atop a near by mountain is a pre Inca monument that is exactly on the equator beating the French measurement technology, no less than 1000 years previous. We were informed all this by a most passionate and disgruntled Ecuadorian of the Quiasto organisation (who had recently been moved from the monument complex for being a "problem") who's function is to preserve and inform people of the pre Inca people who had mapped the equator and various other important measurements.